Lockup

Court officers foiled an accused murderer's attempt to escape from a district court lockup in Baltimore Friday evening, police said.Marco Danard Silver, 22, of Baltimore, who is accused of two counts of murder, tried to escape from the district court on Wabash Avenue by switching places with a man accused of a lesser crime, according to the state Division of Pretrial Detention Services.Mr. Silver was at the courthouse lockup with Brian Hailey, 19, also of Baltimore, after a bail review Friday.

A judge has officially ended federal oversight of a Baltimore youth lockup, the state's juvenile justice agency reported Tuesday. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice informed the state Department of Juvenile Services that it was satisfied with improvements to the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, where teenage boys awaiting trial in juvenile court or placement in longer-term facilities are housed. Poor conditions had led the state to enter into an oversight agreement with federal authorities in May 2007.

A 20-year-old man being held on a probation violation charge is accused of escaping from the city's Central District police lockup yesterday by crawling through a ceiling duct and kicking out a wall, police said.Officer Robert W. Weinhold Jr., a police spokesman, said Aaron Bryan Roberts is accused of diverting the attention of a guard to get out of the lockup in the 500 block of E. Baltimore St., near police headquarters.City police arrested Mr. Roberts Friday on a charge that heviolated his probation stemming from his recent release from jail on a manslaughter charge.

Federal monitoring of the long-troubled Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center is likely to end soon, state juvenile services officials said Wednesday, making it the third youth facility in Maryland to be lifted from such oversight in little more than two years. The officials said a U.S. Department of Justice monitor has told them the city facility appears to be in "substantial compliance" with an oversight plan laid out in May 2007. Federal officials sought to make the facility safer by improving suicide prevention programs, education and behavior management, said Jay Cleary, a spokesman for the state Department of Juvenile Services.

A sheriff's deputy was stabbed in the head with his jail key yesterday in the Baltimore Circuit Court lockup by a convicted murderer, a sheriff's office spokesman said. Deputy Phil Borowski, 47, was escorting Deon Carter, 20, back to his cell from the bathroom about 2:30 p.m. when Carter attacked him and demanded to know where his gun was, said Capt. Marshall T. Goodwin, the spokesman. Borowski pushed Carter inside his cell, but not before Carter grabbed his key ring and stabbed him just below the left temple with a key roughly 6 inches long.

Maryland's Supermax prison, a $21 million structure that houses death row inmates and other hard-core troublemakers in the heart of Baltimore, could be torn down less than 15 years after its construction as the state shifts its philosophy on corrections. "We do hope to get rid of Supermax," state corrections Secretary Mary Ann Saar told Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and other officials yesterday. "It does not serve our purpose programmatically or any other way." The austere prison keeps inmates in confinement 23 hours a day and offers no space for counseling, drug treatment or education, services that Saar and other corrections experts consider vital to helping criminals return to their communities.

On Monday, Andrew P. Hanes was a juror in a criminal trial. Yesterday, the tables were turned: He spent the day in jail.Found in contempt of court for not showing up Tuesday for the deliberations in the trial, Hanes, 22, was led out of a Baltimore Circuit Court room in handcuffs."

Baltimore County police have tentatively identified a man whose body was found under a bridge in the 1700 block of Greenspring Valley Road on Saturday as a 29-year-old Hispanic male, authorities said yesterday. The medical examiner's office said an autopsy indicated that the death was a homicide. Police have not released the victim's name because they have not contacted family members. Anyone with information is asked to contact county police at 410-307-2020 or Metro Crime Stoppers at 866-7-LOCKUP.

Seven people, including an employee at the Mitchell Courthouse in Baltimore, were arrested yesterday after drugs believed to be valued at $1 million were recovered from two houses in the city, Baltimore police said today.The arrests came after police learned that a "mother lode" of heroin was due to be delivered to a house in the 400 block of S. Monroe St. in southwest Baltimore yesterday, said Officer Jack Hergenroeder of the Southern District.Jerome Davis, 35, a clerk in the pre-trial release unit at the courthouse, was charged with heroin distribution, possession with intent to distribute, possession, possession with intent to distribute marijuana, marijuana possession and conspiracy to distribute heroin.

IT WAS GLORIOUS morning across the greater Baltimore area yesterday, with children headed off to the first day of school, and it was the usual midnight in the basement of the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse, where one more round of boys in handcuffs and leg irons was marched into the juvenile lockup.A couple of them struggled to hold up their pants with their elbows as they walked up steps leading to a big holding cell. Their belts had been taken away. Behind them, down a darkened corridor, benches were filled with more kids in trouble, and with those parents who'd bothered to accompany them, all of them spilled over from a big room, No. 125, that was filled with young people.

The state's juvenile justice monitor has warned legislators that Baltimore's youth lockup "is going through a severe and dangerous crisis," describing in a letter how employee failures led to a barricade situation last week and how "erroneous" reports filed by employees concealed a similar disturbance in late July. Recent events at the 144-bed Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center "threaten the lives and safety of both youth and staff," Marlana Valdez, who works for the Maryland attorney general, wrote in an Oct. 10 letter to top legislators and others.

Maryland State Police troopers and nine drug-sniffing dogs swept through the city juvenile lockup yesterday as part of an investigation into a recent drug problem in the secure facility. A three-hour search of the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center turned up one cell phone but no narcotics - evidence, one juvenile official said, that tighter facility policies are working. Searches last week, without the dogs, revealed enough marijuana to roll five to eight joints, plus cigarettes and three cell phones, said John Dixon, deputy secretary of the state Department of Juvenile Services.

Dwayne Price had been arrested 11 times and had run away from state custody at least once. Yet at the age of 18, the state's juvenile justice system gave him one final chance at rehabilitation, sending him to Pennsylvania's Camp Adams, a youth lockup north of Allentown. Less than three weeks later, Price escaped. Pennsylvania authorities quickly caught, charged and convicted him as an adult. But because he had been waiting in jail for 145 days, they paroled him three days after he was sentenced, putting him back on the streets - likely years before he would have been if he hadn't escaped.

They were savvy kids, but some were surprised by the shackles. When a group of correctional officers visited a Southwest Baltimore elementary school yesterday to deliver some real-life lessons, few students were prepared for the sight of Clinton Brinkley, the father of a fellow student, shuffling across the classroom floor, his legs shackled, his wrists cuffed and bound by a chain around his waist. "You don't want to be in this position," said Brinkley, 40, who had gamely volunteered for the indignity of the moment but for whom such confinement was not unfamiliar.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. -- Brian Roberts was having dinner with his parents Tuesday night when the rhythmic buzzing of his phone got his attention. When he looked down, he saw a text message from a former teammate and longtime friend that started with the word "Congratulations." Roberts, who earlier in the day learned that his two-year, $14.3 million contract extension with the Orioles had been finalized, worked quickly to return the text. The first thing the second baseman wrote to B.J. Ryan was "Thanks."

Baltimore County police have tentatively identified a man whose body was found under a bridge in the 1700 block of Greenspring Valley Road on Saturday as a 29-year-old Hispanic male, authorities said yesterday. The medical examiner's office said an autopsy indicated that the death was a homicide. Police have not released the victim's name because they have not contacted family members. Anyone with information is asked to contact county police at 410-307-2020 or Metro Crime Stoppers at 866-7-LOCKUP.

Look at these guys: handcuffed, soaking wet, standing in the ballpark lockup like six drenched hounds. They're all that remains of Rainout Theater on another night in the underbelly of Camden Yards.As Baltimore Police Lt. Russell Shea Jr., the head of ballpark security, puts it: "Something always comes up."An offensive drunk, people with stolen tickets sitting in the rightful owners' seats, a woman pouring a soda on an ex-lover's head. Nothing too scary, but always something.A rain delay, for example, and six guys doing the Rick Dempsey belly slide on the tarpaulin.

Theron Richardson, a hero who became a jailbird by mistake, got his honor back last week. The city of Baltimore took roughly three seconds to throw his case out of court. But it took a month, and an arrest and the traumatizing of his family, to reach those three seconds."I'm just sorry it had to come this far" said Richardson, standing in a Wabash Avenue district courthouse corridor when it was over Friday morning."I'm offering you my apology," said city police Officer Robert Benson, who, like Richardson, was trying to do the right thing but had to make snap decisions on the evening of Jan. 31 without knowing all the facts.

A federal jury last night absolved a former Anne Arundel County police officer of blame in the death of a 20-year-old man who he thought was drunk but who had consumed a fatal amount of antifreeze before his arrest. Ending a legal battle in Baltimore U.S. District Court, the jury decided after deliberating 3 1/2 hours that former Officer Charles R. Atwell had no way of knowing that Phillip Montgomery, 20, needed emergency medical treatment before he died Dec. 15, 2000, in a holding cell at an Edgewater police station.